Drawing up to 1 million people every year, Fleet Week is the largest annual spectator event in San Francisco and one of the largest Fleet Weeks in the nation.
Anyone along San Francisco’s waterfront had a ringside seat for two jet teams and the other performers flying over show center, marked by ships and buoys in the bay. Some folks even choose to watch the show from Alcatraz Island, site of the infamous prison. The fickle mid-October weather did not affect the Friday I attended, while Saturday ended up being scrubbed by fog.
Like other over-water air shows, there are no static displays of aircraft during Fleet Week. Performers staged out of nearby airports, like the recently renamed San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport (KOAK), which hosted the Blue Angels.
This is a unique air show environment and the pilots used the terrain and the historic sites to their advantage, with high-speed passes over the iconic bridges or Alcatraz Island.
A standard appearance for Fleet Week, and unique among the air show circuit, are commercial airliner fly-bys. This year it was provided by United Airlines, which kicked off the air show with a Boeing 777 executing low altitude fly-bys in both landing and cruise configurations.
The three-person crew are not routine line pilots but are selected from United’s small pool of test pilots. Formerly done with a 747, the demo now uses a 777-300, the largest plane in the United fleet.
Next up was a rescue demonstration by the U.S. Coast Guard with its MH-65 Dolphin, feeling quite at home since the Bay was teeming with Coast Guard vessels of all shapes and sizes keeping the air show box sterile of wayward boats.
Military fly-bys started with a rare two-seat training version of the U-2 spyplane, then an exhibition by the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor Demo Team. The Raptor, with its vectoring exhaust nozzles, put on a very impressive show full of seemingly impossible maneuvers, many resulting in vapor on and behind the F-22.
The F-22 then paired up with the P-51 Mustang “Val-Halla” for an USAF Heritage Flight display.
The last military solo was a U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II that also pulled quite a bit of vapor from the air during high speed passes before demonstrating the unique hover capabilities of the B-model.
Other civilian acts included the Sukhoi West Demo Team. Featuring Randy Howell and Cory Lovell from the Patriots Jet Team, this duo flew their Sukhoi Su-26 aerobatic aircraft.
Jet warbird fans enjoyed the performance of Greg Colyer in his Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star “Ace Maker” as he got down below mast height on some of his runs.
Performing during the weekend only were the Patriots Jet Team, a civilian act flying surplus Czech L-39 Albatros trainers in a distinctive gloss black color scheme. Debuting in 2003 as a two-ship team, they evolved into their current six-jet team format.
Now it was time for the headliner act, the Blue Angels, to show their stuff. Per tradition, their C-130 transport “Fat Albert” warmed up the crowd with a series of fly-bys.
The Blues put on quite a show as always — being late in the season one can see the confidence built up over many shows as they flew as close as 18 inches to each other.
This show was a nice finale for my air show season. It’s hard to beat the locale but paid the price dealing with all the traffic trying to exit the city on a Friday afternoon.
A tradition started in May 1908, San Francisco has hosted this modern Fleet Week since 1981, a way for the city to honor the men and women of the US and allied armed forces. Besides the air show acts, several naval ships were open to the public during the week for tours.
For more information: FleetWeekSF.org
Great Celebration
This nation is $36T in the hole and our military is wasting money with flight demos to the millions of homeless in California. I doubt this will help their recruiting efforts.